


Call This a Ghost Story

by ryyves



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Episode: s01e18 Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place, For Juno and the choice he makes, Other, Poetry, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:48:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26961667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: What I’m saying is this: give me a door and I will walk out of it. I’m sorry. It’s the way I’m built.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 11
Kudos: 20





	Call This a Ghost Story

**Author's Note:**

> Rated M for sexual content, just to be safe.

Call this what it is: a ghost story.  
Your glasses on the bedside table. Your glasses tucked  
inside your collar, neck purple and blue like an ocean  
so many of us dreamed of. We dreamed of Andromeda,  
of Alpha Centauri, of Ursa Minor stumbling scared as any of us  
toward a mother it didn’t know would still be there  
a light year into the future. What I’m saying is  
if there’s a way home then I don’t know how to find it.

I leave my hands like ghosts on your skin.  
I leave my nails. I leave bruises from your thighs  
to your jaw, across the diamond of your skin.  
Give your name to someone else.  
Give your promises. Give the sky black and lacy;  
give its frostbite. I reach inside you and my fingers go blue,  
so tell me, which of us freezes first? I have a door in one hand  
and a door in the other, but tell me:  
which are you brave enough to open? The one where I greet you  
in the morning with a kiss? Where the sky is still brown  
and any stiff hotel room feels like heaven.  
Where I let you walk out first. Your shirt on the floor  
and your lace on the floor and my stomach on the floor, too,  
because I have never known a man  
who makes me want to stay.

What I’m saying is this: give me a door  
and I will walk out of it. I’m sorry.  
It’s the way I’m built. Every cocked-safety bone in me.  
Call this what it is: a ghost story. The city chrome and chitin,  
every streetlight sharp as your teeth.  
Every billboard shows your face under a different name,  
and I am running out of ways to tell them apart.  
You and the city. You vs. the city. You and then the taste of you,  
my mouth swollen with you, my fingers frostbitten and stiff  
until you fall apart around me. Every part of you exhales.  
I fall into the promise of you upon reminiscence,  
but then you are a taillight blaze in the sky, a rocket trail.  
In this story, none of us come home. I compile the clues,  
lay out the evidence. I am holding up two billboards  
and both of them are you. One of them is smiling.  
One of them holds to its mouth an anatomical heart, neon and bold.  
I don’t know which is you but they loom over every street corner,  
so tell me: who gets to be the ghost?  
Who gets to walk out of this story first? A sky full of stars, a hungry night.  
We keep waking up in the same room, naked and small,  
while the covers keep pulling away. You want to see the shape of me,  
and I don’t want to take off my shirt. Trust me, you say.  
You’re beautiful, you say. I cover my ears  
but then you see me anyway, half scar and the other half fear,  
and there isn’t enough lace in all the world  
to make me beautiful.

Call this what it is: a ghost town. Your hands, your ribs, your long  
bare thighs, your sternum rigid while your pulse went on.  
I remember your pulse. I remember I pressed my ear against it  
until I thought I would fall asleep, and I remember that scared me.  
I leave a hundred lovers in a hundred beds, leave my hair  
across their pillows, zip my skirts with my back to their windows.  
In the neon night, a hand touches the outside of my thigh.  
Someone says my name. My body is a ghost town  
but you don’t get that way without a few locked rooms.  
My body is untouching yours. Tying its shoes.  
Closing the door. Ask me the names of my ghosts and I will say me,  
and me, and you.


End file.
